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The Habsburg Empire once stretched from Italy’s Lombardy to Ukraine’s Lviv.

Despite having been cut off from this hinterland during the Cold War, Austrians feel close to Central and Eastern Europe. Austria is also the second-biggest investor in Central and Eastern Europe, in terms of GDP, after Germany.

Bratislava is a fifty-minute drive away, and Budapest can be reached in a few hours.

Second, look at Austria’s cultural and economic ties to the East.

It is the second-richest EU member state after Luxembourg.

Government debt and the budget deficit are modest by eurozone standards, at 80.3 percent and 2.8 percent of GDP respectively in 2014, according to the European Commission’s forecast in May of that year.

After the Second World War, Germany went through a painful soul-searching process. It still portrays itself as a victim of the Germans.

With such a dramatic, bloody history, Austrians began to do everything to avoid conflict.

The country has a different relationship with Russia from that of Poland or the Baltic states: those countries were “freed” after the Cold War ended, while Austria’s understanding with Moscow continues.

Vienna applied for EU membership only after an explicit go-ahead by then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989.